U.S. stocks fell on Friday as worry persisted about a financial meltdown stemming from the European debt crisis and after a dramatic intraday drop in indexes in the previous session.

Stocks shrugged off a report showing the U.S. economy added jobs in April at the fastest pace in four years, and a measure of investor fear jumped almost 30 percent.

Governments around the world tried to calm markets after fears about Greece's debt crisis went global, with investors seeing it as an omen of turmoil in other European economies.

The market is obviously very shaken up. Concerns about what's going on in Europe are not going away and people perceive the payroll number as being somewhat old news, said Peter Boockvar, equity strategist at Miller Tabak & Co in New York.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> lost 189.76 points, or 1.80 percent, at 10,330.56. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.SPX> fell 24.82 points, or 2.20 percent, at 1,103.33. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.IXIC> dropped 69.28 points, or 2.99 percent, at 2,250.36.

Apple Inc shares fell 6.6 percent to $230 and weighed on the technology sector. Intel Corp shares fell 2.6 percent to 20.96.

U.S. employers added 290,000 jobs in April, the Labor Department said, and revised figures for February and March to show 121,000 more jobs were added than previously thought. The unemployment rate, however, rose to 9.9 percent as the size of the labor force increased.

A Reuters poll of economists had forecast an April increase of 200,000 jobs and an unemployment rate of 9.7 percent.

Shares of Goldman Sachs Group Inc rose 1.6 percent to $144.55 after the Wall Street Journal reported the company was in settlement talks with the Securities and Exchange Commission over fraud charges.

The Dow suffered its biggest-ever intraday point drop -- 998.5 points -- on Thursday. The freefall may have been exacerbated by an erroneous trade that showed some shares briefly fell to nearly zero. The Nasdaq and other exchanges said they would cancel multiple erroneous trades.

(Editing by Padraic Cassidy)

Apple inc. Unemployment